Robles, the defender of the title obtained in Beijing four years ago and the fastest in the world for the event with a time of 12.87 seconds, could not retain the crown due to an injury in his right thigh that forced him to stop after the fifth hurdle.

Though the Communist authorities do not acknowledge it, for five decades state radio stations have blacklisted musicians who abandoned Fidel Castro’s 1959 Revolution and/or spoke out against it, the BBC reports. Now, that may be changing.

http://rbr.com/cuba-lifts-radio-ban-on-anti-castro-artists/

Foreign business in Cuba: Beware the dangerous embrace

So a strange incongruity exists in Cuba today: Havana is bending over backwards to attract foreign currency at the same time it is imprisoning some of its biggest Western investors. For all Cuba’s reforms, this Castro appears to be as intent on maintaining an iron grip on the country as the last one.

International Port Corp., which offers maritime service from the Miami River to Cuba, is finding the Cuban government is picky about which items it will accept in humanitarian shipments. New Cuban Customs fees could also complicate the business.

In Juba, the capital city of South Sudan, there’s a small corner of Havana. A number of Jubans who studied in Cuba have tried to recreate some of the atmosphere of the Caribbean island in their southern Sudanese homeland.

Robles, the defender of the title obtained in Beijing four years ago and the fastest in the world for the event with a time of 12.87 seconds, could not retain the crown due to an injury in his right thigh that forced him to stop after the fifth hurdle.

Though the Communist authorities do not acknowledge it, for five decades state radio stations have blacklisted musicians who abandoned Fidel Castro’s 1959 Revolution and/or spoke out against it, the BBC reports. Now, that may be changing.

International Port Corp., which offers maritime service from the Miami River to Cuba, is finding the Cuban government is picky about which items it will accept in humanitarian shipments. New Cuban Customs fees could also complicate the business.

In Juba, the capital city of South Sudan, there’s a small corner of Havana. A number of Jubans who studied in Cuba have tried to recreate some of the atmosphere of the Caribbean island in their southern Sudanese homeland.

So a strange incongruity exists in Cuba today: Havana is bending over backwards to attract foreign currency at the same time it is imprisoning some of its biggest Western investors. For all Cuba’s reforms, this Castro appears to be as intent on maintaining an iron grip on the country as the last one.

Many of you will remember the One Cuba campaign petitioning Pope Benedict XVI to meet with human rights leaders in Cuba. In terms of making the struggle for liberty in Cuba a part of the narrative in places where it might otherwise not have been, the campaign was a resounding success.

I’d like to invite all ofyou to take part in our new campaign. It’s an opportunity for all of us to make a simple gesture of solidarity with the Cuban people.

But on the morning of August 5 of that year, the Malecón became a battlefield. Around the ferry dock to Regla people were gathering, encouraged by the hijackings of several boats throughout the summer. An extended sensation of the end, of chaos, of “zero hour” was palpable in the atmosphere.

RELEASES

From Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: As A Dozen Former U.S. Foreign Policy Makers Endorse Document Rejecting Commercial Ties With Cuba While Castros Remain In Power, Ros-Lehtinen Congratulates Them For Putting Freedom First

Cuba is moving along with reforms aimed at boosting its economy, but has also laid out new taxes that angered many and pose a threat to the growth of small businesses critical to the government’s economic plans.

It’s up to Cuban-Americans to save Hispanics from las mentiras, or the lies of the Dem left.

Ted Cruz’s victory in Texas, as well as the success of Marco Rubio, put Cuban-Americans on the front page of American politics. These wins also give us an opportunity to craft a message to Hispanics — a message that emphasizes individual freedom, self-reliance, a skepticism of the state, and the value of family in our culture.

We hear it over and over again that Cuban-Americans are different. We are often called the “other” Hispanics. The media calls us “reactionaries” or “right-wingers” or makes fun of our disdain for communism.

Most folks don’t know it, but there is now a legal way for U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. It is called the People to People Program, and it is available through a select number of U.S. travel groups. Among them are the Grand Circle Foundation, ElderTreks, Friendly Planet, and National Geographic Expeditions.

The saga of F.D. Pooser, the former county tax collector who resigned after being denounced by a Marion County grand jury for failure to collect taxes and for shortages in his collections, wasn’t quite over by the end of 1897.

Cuba is moving along with reforms aimed at boosting its economy, but has also laid out new taxes that angered many and pose a threat to the growth of small businesses critical to the government’s economic plans.

Ted Cruz’s victory in Texas, as well as the success of Marco Rubio, put Cuban-Americans on the front page of American politics. These wins also give us an opportunity to craft a message to Hispanics — a message that emphasizes individual freedom, self-reliance, a skepticism of the state, and the value of family in our culture.

We hear it over and over again that Cuban-Americans are different. We are often called the “other” Hispanics. The media calls us “reactionaries” or “right-wingers” or makes fun of our disdain for communism.

Most folks don’t know it, but there is now a legal way for U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba. It is called the People to People Program, and it is available through a select number of U.S. travel groups. Among them are the Grand Circle Foundation, ElderTreks, Friendly Planet, and National Geographic Expeditions.

In Marion County, the focus in early 1898 was on the revolution taking place in Cuba. Most of the Cubans who had populated Marti City, the cigar manufacturing district in West Ocala, were gone. They had moved to Ybor City at Tampa, where they had been promised more than Ocala could ever offer, to continue making cigars and continue fundraising drives to assist the Cuban rebels.

Led by smugglers armed with knives and machetes, Mayra Reyes and 14 other Cubans sloshed through swamps and rivers and suffered hordes of mosquitoes as they struggled across the notorious Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, the only north-south stretch of the Americas to defy road-builders.

Cuba’s Leuris Pupo won gold in the men’s 25-meter rapid fire pistol event Friday and set an Olympic shooting record in the process.

Pupo tied a world record and set an Olympic mark with a score of 34 in the final round to beat India’s Vijay Kumar by four shots. Ding Feng of China won bronze with a score of 27. All three of the countries on the podium had never medaled in this event before.

Cuban officials are highlighting earlier traffic violations by a Spaniard involved in a car crash that killed prominent dissident Oswaldo Paya, saying he was notified recently that his driver’s license was being revoked.

Liberal Democrat Hispanics and their polling colleagues at Latino Decisions say Rubio doesn’t help Romney among Hispanic registered voters, but there is a better answer to that question. It was provided by Hispanic Republicans in Texas on run-off day, Tuesday the 30th.

Not only did Ted Cruz receive a mountain of votes in his 56.8% to 43.2% defeat of the Texas’ Lt. Governor but he received a mountain of Hispanic Republican votes as well.

The Cuban authorities must end their ongoing harassment of political and human rights activists, Amnesty International said today after a former prisoner of conscience was released following his latest arrest and detention in a police station for 36 hours.

José Daniel Ferrer García, coordinator of the organization Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unión Patriótica de Cuba, UNPACU), was set free on Wednesday, two days after police arrested him in the eastern province of Holguín.

And, finally, here is the full text of a release from Cuba Archive. This is dated July 31, but I only came across it now.

Investigate the deaths of Cuba’s Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero

Miami, July 31, 2012. The circumstances surrounding the death in a car crash last July 22nd of Oswaldo Payá, Cuba´s foremost opposition leader, and Harold Cepero, a young member of his movement, are shrouded in suspicion and countless unanswered questions. Angel Carromero, from Spain and Aron Modig, from Sweden, both 27, survived the crash. While in detention they separately issued self-incriminating public statements validating Cuba’s official version of the crash (Carromero´s was filmed, Modig´s was in the presence of journalists from news organizations authorized in Cuba). They each faced long years of prison, apparently now “forgiven,” for violations to Cuba’s despotic national security and immigration laws disallowing “unconstitutional political activities.” Both are members of youth group of political parties from their respective countries that promote the peaceful democratization of Cuba. While Modig was released and able to leave the country, his account is compromised by his friend’s continued detention and facing charges of involuntary homicide entailing up to 20 years of prison.

The international community must investigate if these deaths resulted from state-sponsored operations or involved state agents. If suspicions prove well founded, Cuba should be held accountable at all levels –bilaterally, multilaterally, and at all appropriate international instances and bodies.

Urgent action is required to demand:

the safety and wellbeing as well as procedural fairness for Angel Carromero;

unrestricted access to Carromero by the Payá and Cepero families, trusted third parties, and the media at a safe location –outside of Cuba­ or at a trusted embassy in Havana– with no pressure from Cuban authorities and after toxicology tests have ruled out the presence of drugs;

transparency from the families and colleagues of Cepero and Modig as well as from the governments of Spain and Sweden regarding events surrounding the crash, including release to the public of records of all calls made and text messages sent by Carromero or Modig the day of the incident;

comprehensive investigations of the deaths of Payá and Cepero conducted by reliable independent international experts granted free and full access to all witnesses and material evidence;

autopsies of the bodies of Payá and Cepero by a trusted pathology team in a facility outside of Cuba.

That the Cuban regime employs terror and violence to silence its detractors is well established. Torture of prisoners —including with psychotropic drugs— is commonplace. Thus, there are no guarantees that self-incriminating testimony was not made under duress and/or in exchange for leniency in the severity of the penalties. If the government has nothing to hide, it should have no problem allowing the above.

The official newspaper of Cuba´s Communist Party, Granma, has repeated its absurd claim that the revolution has never been responsible for even one extrajudicial killing, disappearance, torture, or kidnapping. Yet, the dictatorship’s disregard for the sanctity of life and universally held norms of conduct is illustrated in its own laws as well as in first-hand accounts of its citizens and decades of reports by international human rights’ organizations and entities. Our Truth and Memory project has to date documented 27 forced disappearances and 4,652 lives lost to Cuba´s firing squads and in extrajudicial killings, including of many persons in detention or prison. This excludes many more deaths of detainees from lack of medical care and in reported suicides, for which Cuba is also held responsible. This information challenges the Cuban regime to disprove each and every one of these cases.

Furthermore, Cuba Archive has received reports of a considerable number of deaths from “accidents” of detractors of the Cuban regime —in Cuba and in several countries— surrounded by mysterious circumstances and strongly pointing to state-sponsored killings. Examples are summarized in our Report Cuba: Strange accidents and other unexplained deaths; those resulting in death appear in our electronic database of documented cases (see www.CubaArchive.orgfor both). The sudden illness and death of Laura Pollán, leader of Cuba´s Ladies in White, deserves to be highlighted and calls for an independent investigation. (See our release of 10/25/2011.)

That the international community has not held Cuba’s government accountable for even its more evident and egregious human rights’ violations has only emboldened it further. As long as it enjoys sustained impunity and is legitimized by the civilized world, it will continue to employ terror and violence to silence its detractors.

Miami, July 31, 2012. The circumstances surrounding the death in a car crash last July 22nd of Oswaldo Payá, Cuba´s foremost opposition leader, and Harold Cepero, a young member of his movement, are shrouded in suspicion and countless unanswered questions. Angel Carromero, from Spain and Aron Modig, from Sweden, both 27, survived the crash. While in detention they separately issued self-incriminating public statements validating Cuba’s official version of the crash (Carromero´s was filmed, Modig´s was in the presence of journalists from news organizations authorized in Cuba). They each faced long years of prison, apparently now “forgiven,” for violations to Cuba’s despotic national security and immigration laws disallowing “unconstitutional political activities.” Both are members of youth group of political parties from their respective countries that promote the peaceful democratization of Cuba. While Modig was released and able to leave the country, his account is compromised by his friend’s continued detention and facing charges of involuntary homicide entailing up to 20 years of prison.